Eleven African countries organising the next summit on the troubled Great Lakes region set for December will meet in Angola next week to prepare a pact on border security, a United Nations official said on Thursday.
The preparatory meeting, beginning on Monday, will also discuss protecting displaced people, setting up a regional certification scheme for natural resources so that they are not used to finance wars, as well as democracy and good governance, he said.
George Ola-Davies told Agence France Presse that these proposals would then be “submitted before the foreign ministers of the 11 countries during a meeting in Bangui towards the end of October”.
At the Luanda meeting, delegates from Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia will try to formulate a “pact on security and development,” he said.
This would eventually be signed by the leaders of the member countries at the next Great Lakes summit in Nairobi on December 16 and 17, he said.
The Great Lakes region has been Africa’s worst trouble spot since the 1960s with ethnic and civil wars — including Rwanda’s 1994 genocide — claiming millions of lives. – AFP